A Life Without Odin Barely Defines Robin Ince

I wish that could be true for me. Robin Ince lives in a rather more secular culture. I live a few blocks from a cemetery with an odious electronic chime that plays hymns every goddamned 15 minutes; I live in a town with approximately 15 churches; I’ve been condemned by the county council of churches; I share a state with Michele Bachmann, a state where every couple of years we get to have another battle to keep creationism out of the public school science standards. I’m in a country where a politician denying evolution because the Bible says the earth is less than ten thousand years old, or denying climate change because their god promised to never screw up the weather again, are perfectly practical positions that will endear them to their benighted segment of the electorate. I wish these people would just take their faith into the churches and leave the rest of us be.

But at least Robin is generally correct in this part.

For a while I have worried there is a rise in the superior atheist, though I hope that is not true of most I know. I believe there can be a lack of imagination and experience amongst some atheists. We can gloriously bathe in the reprehensible examples of faith inspired misogynists, homophobes, terrorists and other thugs, and ignore the religious people who amble around us, filled with doubt, questions, compassions and a non-dogmatic view of the world. There are cultures and countries, where the repugnant, muscular hand of organised religion manipulates the populace. There are people who embrace dogmas, religious or political, and will refuse to view them with a critical eye, whatever the evidence might seem to be; old Maoists or Catholic die-hards who, while eagerly criticising other persuasions, will remain energetically blind to “their own sides” shortfalls. I am sure I have and will fail to notice my own shortcomings, while criticising those I see as opponents for exactly the actions I have been guilty of. It seems that is part of the human survival mechanism, though I hope I am becoming more vivacious in my eye for personal hypocrisy.

These are concerns that sometimes leave me in despair. Yeah, I’m surrounded by the absurdly devout, but as we’ve all been discovering in the last few years, my chosen atheist community is pretty well cluttered with arrogant, petty assholes. Some days I feel even more isolated than before.

So, this Odin guy…are his followers enlightened and tolerant?

Pwning David Barton

Barton is such a lying tool. Chris Rodda catches him in an outright lie: Barton claims that gun accidents didn’t occur in 18th century America, and that he could only find two accounts of such problems. I guess he must be a very bad historian, then, in addition to lacking any sense, because Chris just went browsing and found lots of accounts of accidental shooting deaths and injuries (as you’d expect — guns are dangerous tools, of course you’re going to get accidents!)

One other thing you might do, though, is that a link to the story is on Reddit…and some people have even downvoted it. Why? I don’t know. Rodda’s story is full of hard evidence that Barton was completely wrong. Those of you with Reddit accounts might head over there and give your honest opinion.

Need more paleontological women

The latest issue of Priscum, the newsletter of the Paleontological Society (pdf), has an interesting focus: where are the women in paleontology? They have a problem, in that only 23% of their membership are women, and I hate to say it, but the stereotype of a paleontologist is Roy Chapman Andrews — most people don’t imagine a woman when they hear the word paleontologist (unjustly, I know!)

On the other hand, 37% of the paleontology presentations at the GSA were by women. They’re there, but they aren’t getting far up the ladder of success. They’re not achieving high status positions within the society at the same rate as men, and then there’s this skewed distribution:

So women are over-represented in the student category, but under-represented in the professional category. The optimistic way to look at that is that there is an opportunity for change, and maybe that wave of current students will move on up and change the distribution ten years from now. More pessimistically, it suggests that there could be barriers that preferentially block the advancement of women in the field; if the distribution doesn’t change in the next decade, that says that there were more frustrated women who left the discipline than men.

So why would women experience greater barriers to advancement? It isn’t about evil men keeping the women down, and I wish we could clear away the resentment some men express when they hear that there are greater obstacles to women’s progress — too often I hear angry responses to accusations of academic sexism taken personally, as if it were a statement of personal criminality. It’s a product of the system, and men and women mostly contribute to it by neglect and an unwillingness to change the status quo.

What I most often see is statements of fact that I don’t disagree with, such as that women on average have lower publication rates than men, but the problem is that these advocates of blaming the inherent properties of women for their failure don’t think it through. Why do women have lower publication rates? Are there structural/cultural/professional properties that conflict and cause problems that men don’t see? And most importantly, if there are, what can we do to correct those institutional biases? Just saying that “women publish less” begs the question.

This article had a very helpful diagram illustrating the contributing factors, taken from a paper discussing a similar problems among evolutionary biologists.

Right there in the center is issue of lower publication rates in women, but it looks deeper at consequences and causes. Follow the arrows. I’ve seen similar charts before — it looks a heck of a lot like an extinction vortex, a self-perpetuating cycle of defeat.

Another article in the same newsletter describes the distribution of the leadership of the Paleontological Society. It shows steady improvement in the proportion of women in the society leadership, but still, most of the executive positions have been held by women less than 10% of the time. The more recently the position was created, the higher the proportion of women. I also noticed one outlier: 67% of the Education and Outreach Coordinators (a very new position) have been women. That’s another stereotype, too, that women are better suited to teaching. Look at the diagram above: going into teaching is also one of the factors that hurts research productivity, and as long as research is more highly valued than teaching, and teaching is considered ‘women’s work’, it’s going to skew representation of the sexes.

They have a proposal to correct the imbalance. Notice that it doesn’t involve simply declaring that they have equality of opportunity (which they don’t!) and doing nothing. Correcting these kinds of biases requires active intervention.

Societies are strengthened by incorporating diversity (of gender, of ethnicity, of abilities, of ideas, and of disciplines). As a society, we need to be aware of equity issues and take intentional steps to counteract imbalances. The recommendations below relate to increasing ALL types of diversity. So far, we have data on gender equity, but there are many other types of diversity we should work to improve. This set of recommendations applies to all of them.

Intentional nominations. Think about the excellent female colleagues you have. Now nominate at least one of them for a leadership position (we have several open this year!) or a society award. All Society positions are open nominations, so please share your ideas!

Mentoring. Establish professional relationships with young women in paleontology (students and early career professionals). Spend some extra time at poster sessions meeting some of our student members. Encourage women to submit abstracts for oral presentations. Established women, share your career stories and experiences.

New initiatives. PS Council is dedicated to increasing equity for all types of diversity in our membership. Please share any ideas you may have for initiatives with [the author] or other council members—now and in the future.

Mighty fine lawyers down there in Kentucky

The Kentucky office of Homeland Security is being sued by American Atheists and others for the absurdity of a statement on a plaque and their training materials that the “safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God” — that statement just fills you with confidence in their competence, doesn’t it? Splattering an official document with testimonials to your failure to cope except by closing your eyes and praying is not something I want to see from people responsible for my security.

The state Attorney General has responded, and no, I am not reassured or confident that we’re dealing with grown-ups anymore. The gist of his arguments that this is not a problem of church-state separation is that:

Denial! State security has a secular purpose, so this isn’t really a religious claim.
Evasion! They aren’t making anyone swear an oath, so it’s OK.
Contradiction! While there may be a mingling of religion and government (? See statement 1), you can assess the statute while pretending it doesn’t have a religious component.

That’s in a petition to the Supreme Court defending the right to rely on their god. I’d say it doesn’t have a chance, except…SCALIAAAA!

The slut was just asking for it

Look at her, exposing all that skin and smiling enticingly, tempting every man she meets.

About a year ago, her father, Fayhan Ghamdi, had concerns about her virginity — are you surprised? Look at her! — and brought her in for a medical examination. I guess she didn’t pass to his satisfaction, because he took her home and beat her.

The man, said to be a religious scholar who is also a regular guest on Islamic television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, activists from the group Women to Drive said in a statement on Saturday.

Lamia was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011, with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said.

Also,”she had been raped ‘everywhere'” — it’s reported that her “rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed” (horrific injury whited out; select it if you must see it, otherwise…not for the sensitive). All this was done by her devout father who was concerned about her purity.

The father was arrested. (“I should hope so!” is what you’re thinking.)

Lama, the little girl, died of her injuries about 10 months later.

This was in Saudi Arabia, where they have laws that “a father cannot be executed for murdering his children, nor can husbands be executed for murdering their wives”. So the death penalty was off the table, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned, and I just wish it were an expression of humanity rather than a special exception for men, with women otherwise getting their heads chopped off for lesser offenses.

Unfortunately, a month after the child died and less than a year after the brutal beating and torture that led to her death…